Ex-firefighter returns to Guadalupe Street Coffee, West Side.

Edward Garcia, a chef at the Guadalupe Street Coffee, grew up in the nearby West Side neighborhood. He is elevating the cuisine offered at the coffee shop and teaching young volunteers about eating healthy and job skills.

Photo By BILLY CALZADA/SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

Edward Garcia, prepares to cook bacon at Guadalupe Street Coffee. He has a group of middle-schoolers helping him at the shop.

After spending four years in the Marine Corps, then fighting fires in Iraq, Edward Garcia has a new project: Taking some of the training that he received in culinary school and the Waldorf Astoria to fight obesity and diabetes in the neighborhood where he grew up.

Garcia not only cooks the lunch menu and handles catering jobs for the quickly growing business, he also trains young people in the kitchen and is about to start programs relating to food and wellness.

“We want to bring in parents with young kids, teach different snack options, show them that McDonald's and carne guisada isn't the only thing you can eat that tastes good,” he said. “You can cook something, and it might take a little longer, and you can get the kids involved and it becomes a habit, and maybe in the future, maybe it will stop the obesity in this neighborhood, stop the diabetes.”

Garcia talks quickly, as though his thoughts are coming rapidly and he wants to try to get all of them out at the same time. He's not rushed, but he's in a hurry to get things done. In his life, it seems as though he's about to step off a cliff into the unknown when a new step suddenly appears. At the age of 30, he has lived more places than many people much older.

Growing up, cooking was just something he did. He enjoyed it but initially didn't want to do it professionally. After going to Palo Alto College for a year, he decided he wanted to follow his father's path in the Marines.

“I joined so I could see the world, but all I saw was the southwest part of the nation,” he said. “I went to boot camp in San Diego, fire academy in San Angelo and got stationed in Yuma, Ariz. I thought, ‘I could have done this myself.'”

When he and his fellow Marines weren't training or working, they would spend at least part of the time eating. For Garcia, it was natural to do the cooking. Then, toward the end of his four-year commitment, he had a moment that gave him the nudge he needed.

“I'm thinking, ‘I really love this firefighter thing, but I love to cook, too,'” he recounted. “I'm literally in the TV room and then I saw (an ad for) Le Cordon Bleu. I'm thinking, that has to be some kind of sign.”

The following week, after finishing with the Marines, he began classes at the Texas Culinary Academy in Austin, while working at Whole Foods, where he did his externship. That experience taught him that he could prepare healthy dishes that still tasted good.

Shortly before graduating, he called the owner of a restaurant in Arizona that he enjoyed visiting and asked her for a job. As it turned out, she was opening a place in two weeks and needed a sous chef.

From that job, he came back home and got a job at Azúca, working under chef René Fernandez. Through Fernandez, Garcia met Catarina Velásquez, then an owner of Ruta Maya coffeehouse downtown, who needed someone to run the kitchen there.

While working at Ruta Maya, he decided to go back into firefighting. He took some courses at San Antonio College and was able to get a job as a contract firefighter working at Tal Afar Airbase in northern Iraq.

“You get into this routine. You go and eat your chow, you go into the gym,” he said. “It shows you how ... not having luxuries that you have at home, how to appreciate what you have. ... I felt like we were really making a change over there.”

But he couldn't shake his desire to go back into the kitchen.

“He'd call and say, ‘Chef, I'm here, I'm making money, but I'm not happy.'” Fernandez of Azúca remembered. “I'd tell him, ‘You need to work in what you love and that will bring you success.'”

When Garcia came back from Iraq, he and Velásquez talked about this new coffeehouse at 1320 Guadalupe St. on the West Side, how it would help with job placement and training and provide teens in the neighborhood with a place they could go after school.

Garcia then went on a backpacking trip in Europe for a couple of months, then decided to visit some friends in Seattle, by way of a couple of days in Utah. That turned into a couple of more days in Utah. So, he decided to look for a job there.

“I stumbled across the Waldorf Astoria” in Park City, he said. “I was so intimidated. I hadn't cooked for a year; I had just come back from Iraq. That's a big name, and you feel like you have to be on top of your game.”

He did a stage (similar to an internship) at the Waldorf's Spruce restaurant and received a job offer. After working there a few months, he received a call from Velásquez about the coffee shop. Earlier this year, it went through a renovation. Now, it's a special nonprofit coffeehouse.

The business is actually a program of Baptist Child and Family Services and offers computers for young people and families to use, as well as serving as a safe after-school environment. During a recent lunch visit, professionals with either business or family ties to the area filled the tables next to families from the neighborhood, and every computer was filled.

That aspect of serving the community and helping young people appealed to Garcia.

“It's very rare to find someone who can work in the kitchen (and can) go in there and teach,” Velásquez said. “He's an amazing person to work with. ... When I looked into this position and saw the expansion of the coffee shop and how we can affect change in our community through the kitchen, Edward was the first person I thought of.”

It took some persuading to get him to leave the resort. At first, he wasn't going to do it, but he took a two-month leave of absence when ski season ended to help them get started at the coffeehouse.

That's when he met the kids, who grew up in the same neighborhoods that he did, and they took to him — and vice-versa. Instead of taking two months away from the resort, he decided to stay home for good.

“I feel bad because I stole him from the Waldorf,” Velásquez said.

During the summer, Garcia has a team of middle-school-age helpers at the shop.

“There's always something to do, and these kids are all ready to help,” he said. “I tell the kids, if you're not going to be a good boy or a good girl, you can't come in here and help. I only want good kids in here.”

Even parents are coming in and telling him how their children are behaving better at home since they started working at the coffeehouse.

It's part of the discipline required in a professional kitchen. After all, if a team is going to produce great food in a cramped space, each member needs to work cleanly, quickly and in concert with the other members. Soon enough, he's hoping to begin a more formal program with high school culinary students to provide them some experience they'll need when they go off to a more rigorous culinary program.

Becoming more of a teacher might require Garcia to pull back from the kitchen a little.

“He can focus on developing a strategy to teach San Antonio's low-income kids,” Fernandez said. “He can pull them from trouble to productivity and make them shine.”

For now, Garcia's trying to do it all — cooking, organizing and inspiring.

“At the Waldorf Astoria, it was more precise. The chef would say ‘Everything matters.' I try to bring that here,” Garcia said. “It builds character as well. If you show that much care and detail into something like that, it's going to carry over into other areas.”